Flytrap

Sculptor Jon Goldman likes to inflate things, and he likes to think big: a 40- foot inflatable stethoscope for the Harvard Community Health Plan building, an 8-foot UFO-like blow-up for the Boston Children's Museum. But when Joy Horwich signed Goldman on for a show, she asked him to think small; there wasn`t room to do otherwise. The Boston-based Goldman obliged, filling her gallery at 226 E. Ontario St. with delightfully bizarre inflatable sculpture. A chair with inflatable...

Peter D'Amato traces his love of carnivorous plants to an ad he saw in "Famous Monsters" magazine as a preteen in New Jersey. "They had these ads for Venus' flytraps. I tried them, but they died. " Still, the seed was planted. The following spring, a classmate told him that carnivorous plants grew wild nearby. "He showed me pitcher plants and sundews growing on a lake at the edge of town. It looked like another world to me, and I've been addicted ever since. " In 1998 D'Amato wrote the definitive guide...

Peter D'Amato traces his love of carnivorous plants to an ad he saw in "Famous Monsters" magazine as a preteen in New Jersey. "They had these ads for Venus' flytraps. I tried them, but they died. " Still, the seed was planted. The following spring, a classmate told him that carnivorous plants grew wild nearby. "He showed me pitcher plants and sundews growing on a lake at the edge of town. It looked like another world to me, and I've been addicted ever since. " In 1998 D'Amato wrote the definitive guide...

It may be oversimplifying to suggest that the microscopic mechanism that Mercouri Kanatzidis and Nan Ding have developed resembles a roach motel of nuclear waste, where the ghastly undesirable checks in but doesn't check out. Kanatzidis prefers to call it a Venus flytrap. Either way, the results are the same. The pinkish, powdery material the two researchers created traps cesium-137, a prevalent, stubborn radioactive contaminant. And trapping it could make clearing...

Exit, that nocturnal oasis of the cutting edge in the midst of yuppified Old Town, celebrated its ninth birthday last week. Fittingly, the latest in a long line of industrial-strength punk-metal bands who got their start at the club, Jack Scratch, provided the evening's entertainment. A composite of some of the city's finest bands, including former members of Bloodsport, Effigies, Nicholas Tremulis and Rude Guest, Jack Scratch's performance last week indicated that they are a new force on the local scene.

A delicate fungus gnat, flitting through Emilie Pulver's Hyde Park living room, lands innocently on a glistening droplet clinging to a slender reddish hair on the tendril of a sundew. And struggles in the sticky goo. And dies. And is slowly digested. Kingdom Plantae, 1. Kingdom Animalia, 0. The sundew (Drosera binata) is one of an odd assortment of plants that fascinate hobbyists and biologists because they do something that seems to turn the food chain upside down: They eat insects.

It may be oversimplifying to suggest that the microscopic mechanism that Mercouri Kanatzidis and Nan Ding have developed resembles a roach motel of nuclear waste, where the ghastly undesirable checks in but doesn't check out. Kanatzidis prefers to call it a Venus flytrap. Either way, the results are the same. The pinkish, powdery material the two researchers created traps cesium-137, a prevalent, stubborn radioactive contaminant. And trapping it could make clearing...

Short and sweetly vicious, "500 Clown Frankenstein" is the 500 Clown troupe's second slapstick rumination on great literature and clown's inhumanity to clown. The show, seen in workshop versions earlier this year at the Athenaeum and Theater on the Lake, may stagger a bit in its search for an ending, much as Mary Shelley's creature groped for pity and understanding in the 1818 novel. But most of this 50-minute piece, now at the Loop Theater and almost wholly unrelated to the source material,...

In Emile Zola's "Therese Raquin," the voracious anti-heroine's sensual recklessness is explained away by biology. It is a matter of physiological fact, what Zola termed the "fatalities of the flesh" leading to a bad end, though with some whomping orgasms en route. Zola's later novel "Nana" focuses its male gaze even more obsessively on a courtesan, barely an adult, a coldly compelling object of desire. The quivering masses are no match for her. In "Raquin," the protagonist's behavior...

In Emile Zola's "Therese Raquin," the voracious anti-heroine's sensual recklessness is explained away by biology. It is a matter of physiological fact, what Zola termed the "fatalities of the flesh" leading to a bad end, though with some whomping orgasms en route. Zola's later novel "Nana" focuses its male gaze even more obsessively on a courtesan, barely an adult, a coldly compelling object of desire. The quivering masses are no match for her. In "Raquin," the protagonist's behavior...

A delicate fungus gnat, flitting through Emilie Pulver's Hyde Park living room, lands innocently on a glistening droplet clinging to a slender reddish hair on the tendril of a sundew. And struggles in the sticky goo. And dies. And is slowly digested. Kingdom Plantae, 1. Kingdom Animalia, 0. The sundew (Drosera binata) is one of an odd assortment of plants that fascinate hobbyists and biologists because they do something that seems to turn the food chain upside down: They eat insects.

Glenn "Max" McGee, superintendent of the Illinois State Board of Education, may be on his way out of a job. Tribune writer Stephanie Banchero reported Monday on widespread rumors of his demise as the person who oversees the direction of education in this state. It will not come as much of a surprise if it happens. High-ranking educators have about as much job security as baseball managers. But the reasons may have less to do with McGee's performance than with the daunting and frustrating state...

Fireworks have come a long way since the Chinese first experimented with them back in the 16th Century. Just ask lifelong Joliet resident Joe Turk. Turk, 60, who serves on the city's July 4th committee, inherited his position 15 years ago from his father, Frank Turk, who had helped originate the event 48 years ago. Joe Turk marvels at the changes in pyrotechnics since he began volunteering at the event-fireworks now are synchronized to music and fired off by computer. ...

For Marie-Jose Perec's first races of this outdoor season, races in which she was to run some 35 seconds combined, France's daily sports newspaper, L'Equipe, sent a reporter from Paris. He arrived in Los Angeles on a Saturday, watched Perec in the Mt. Sac Relays on Sunday and returned to France on Monday. The cost to see Perec run for what turned out to be 11.14 seconds: some $2,000 and 24 hours on airplanes. Where Perec and the French media are concerned, it is considered time and money well spent.

Wayne Frank may owe his life to some spare change. As cars in the far left lane whizzed by, the 35-year-old Frankfort resident sat patiently in bumper-to-bumper traffic during the evening rush hour Monday on the northbound side of the Tri-State Tollway. He was thinking about his upcoming vacation-and about paying the upcoming toll. So he leaned over to get change for the toll out of a compartment in his red 1994 Chevy pickup. He didn't see the tractor and semitrailer in the rearview mirror coming up...

Fireworks have come a long way since the Chinese first experimented with them back in the 16th Century. Just ask lifelong Joliet resident Joe Turk. Turk, 60, who serves on the city's July 4th committee, inherited his position 15 years ago from his father, Frank Turk, who had helped originate the event 48 years ago. Joe Turk marvels at the changes in pyrotechnics since he began volunteering at the event-fireworks now are synchronized to music and fired off by computer. ...

Short and sweetly vicious, "500 Clown Frankenstein" is the 500 Clown troupe's second slapstick rumination on great literature and clown's inhumanity to clown. The show, seen in workshop versions earlier this year at the Athenaeum and Theater on the Lake, may stagger a bit in its search for an ending, much as Mary Shelley's creature groped for pity and understanding in the 1818 novel. But most of this 50-minute piece, now at the Loop Theater and almost wholly unrelated to the source material,...

Wayne Frank may owe his life to some spare change. As cars in the far left lane whizzed by, the 35-year-old Frankfort resident sat patiently in bumper-to-bumper traffic during the evening rush hour Monday on the northbound side of the Tri-State Tollway. He was thinking about his upcoming vacation-and about paying the upcoming toll. So he leaned over to get change for the toll out of a compartment in his red 1994 Chevy pickup. He didn't see the tractor and semitrailer in the rearview mirror coming up...

If you are the parents of small children, you know that among the first questions they ask are "When?" and "How long will it take?" So what do you do when the gardening bug bites and they want to venture into your garden, that small, tranquil world you have so diligently nurtured, and proclaim that they want to "help" you or "grow" their own vegetables or flowers? "I tell them not to pull or step on anything green until I get there," said Jan Jacobsen, whose sons,...

If you are the parents of small children, you know that among the first questions they ask are "When?" and "How long will it take?" So what do you do when the gardening bug bites and they want to venture into your garden, that small, tranquil world you have so diligently nurtured, and proclaim that they want to "help" you or "grow" their own vegetables or flowers? "I tell them not to pull or step on anything green until I get there," said Jan Jacobsen, whose sons,...